


My Mother is a Tree

by I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own



Series: Pie is Love, Blood is Life [3]
Category: Dracula Untold (2014), Pushing Daisies, The Almighty Johnsons, The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Reincarnation verse, possible Mike Bashing?! I don't know if it qualifies?!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 13:54:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12234207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own/pseuds/I_have_a_Mycroft_of_my_very_own
Summary: In which our Pie Maker learns that it's not all sunshine and pies for the dwarves, either. We get a glimpse of what happened to Bilbo, Sauron, Smaug, and the Master of Lake-Town, and also of Kili.





	My Mother is a Tree

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my computer for ages and I didn't realize until today how close it was to being finished? Like change a few lines here and there and it's actually done?! Which... I've been hating on this one shot for MONTHS and it turns out past me was just an idiot...?
> 
> For Marla, who made me decide to take another look at this chapter. :)

Ned wanders down into the Pie Hole, Vlad trailing along behind him, neither particularly concerned by the fact it is half past twelve on a weekday. There were joys to a) being the boss and b) not having a job.

“You’ve got Mister Grumples at the counter, he’s just walked in.” Olive tells Ned as she passes him on her way to start her break.

“Awesome, thank you, Olive.” Ned says, smiling and putting on his apron, heading out to greet the customer, he stops in the doorway staring. “Fili?” he asks, eyes wide. The man at the counter looks to him quickly, a frown forming on his face, before scowling.

“Oh, ‘sup, Thranduil.” He greets, sighing heavily. “Just my luck, I guess. All I wanted from this crappy day was some pie. But now-“

“What do you want?” Ned asks, cutting off Fili’s tirade and rolling his eyes.

“Chocolate.” Fili mumbles, letting his head fall onto the counter. Ned sighs and goes to fetch Fili a slice of Chocolate Pie.

“So, do you want to talk about it?” Ned asks as he places the plate down in front of Fili, who mumbles something unintelligible and shakes his head. “You sure?”

“Unless you know about the God’s World, yes, I’m sure.”

“…does dating a vampire count?” Ned asks leaning against the counter. Fili tenses for a few moments and then slowly raises his head to look at Ned once more.

“What?”

“Bard. He reincarnated into Vlad the Impaler.” Ned says, shrugging his shoulders.

“And became Dracula. Of course. Because it’s not like things are weird enough already.”

“Legolas reincarnated into the replacement for Davy Jones.”

“… right.” Fili says, reaching for the pie. “And what did you get?”

“I bring dead things back to life.”

“… of course you do. _Of course_ you do. Can my life get _any_ weirder?” Fili exclaims, before shoving a big piece of pie into his mouth.

“What’s wrong with your life?”

“Okay. Well. For starters, right? My father abandoned my mother, my brothers, and I shortly after Axl was born, right? Okay. And then he went off to return to his main love, the sea. Right? Because he’s Njörðr, and the sea is his entire fucking life, right? Like, he spent most of my childhood running back to her. And coming home to fight with mum and make another baby and then he’d disappear into the fucking night like a… well a vampire. Every time he came home, Mike and I’d have to pick up the pieces when he left, right?” he explains while eating his pie.

“Sorry, who is Mike?”

“My brother. Eldest.”

“Right, sorry. Carry on.”

“Right. So dad’s a good for nothing piece of shit fuck-knuckle. And we think we’re doing well, surviving without him, you know? And we think things are actually pretty _good._ And then Mike turns 21, right? And he and mum disappear off into the night, and when Mike comes home, he tells us that there was an accident, and mum died, but it was okay, because he was going to look after us, right? And because he’s 21, you think he’ll step up and do his damn job, right? But no. He just up and leaves. Sometimes he comes home to bring us money, but mostly he’s just shooting through.”

“Sorry, shooting through?”

“There one second, gone the next.” Fili says, playing with the crumbs of his pie sadly.

“Ah, go on.” Ned answers, fetching Fili another piece of pie.

“So there I am, seventeen years old, raising a thirteen year old and a nine year old on my own, no idea what I’m bloody doing. The only reason we didn’t lose the bloody house was because it had been in mum’s family for generations, so we inherited it when mum ‘died’.” Fili growls, making air quotes around the word. “Mike still drops in to give us money every few weeks, but we’re learning to survive without that. We have a farm, see, so we figure out a system to make that work. No animals, though. Haven’t been animals on our farm since long before mum up and left, sorry, _died_.”

“I take it your mother didn’t actually die?” Ned interjects, pouring Fili a cup of coffee.

“No. She turned into a fucking tree.” Fili snarls, his face distorted by it. “Freyja, goddess of prosperity decided she was bored with mortal life and wanted to be a fuckin’ tree. Never mind that she has three kids at home. _Nah_. _Fuck them_.” He says, viciously stabbing at his pie. Ned watches him stabbing at the pie for a few minutes and sighs.

“Vlad?” he calls towards the kitchen, there’s the flapping of wings, and Vlad walks out of the kitchen.

“You called?”

“Can you watch the shop?” Ned asks, smiling hopefully at the vampire.

“Baking?” Vlad exclaims, eyes wide. “No, no, no.”

“Please?” Ned pleads, staring at Vlad with his puppy dog eyes.

“Aw don’t do that. Ugh, fine.” Vlad says, sighing heavily.

“Okay, I’m going to take Fili to get drunk.”

“Fili?” Vlad asks, glancing beyond Ned, and nodding his head when he sees Fili still angrily attacking his pie. “Interesting.”

“Very.”

“It’s Anders.” Fili mutters, looking up with a scowl. “Or Bragi.”

“Right.”

“Come along, Anders.” Ned says heading back into the kitchen and waiting for Anders to sigh heavily and then climb to his feet.

“I haven’t even gotten to the best bits, yet.”

“That’s why we’re going to get alcohol.” Ned tells him, leading him up the stairs towards the apartments.

“Good idea.”

* * *

“Righ’, and so I become Bragi. And it’s like whoop dee fucking doo. I can talk anyone into doing whatever I want, so long as they have some wish to do it originally in the first place, right? Awesome, cool! Except, now I’m 21, and Mike’s like ‘well, things to do’ and leaves, and he doesn’t come back for _years!”_ Fili exclaims, talking with his hands as much as his voice, Ned has to rescue the alcohol from Fili at least five times. “Oh, but that’s not even the end of it!”

“Go on.” Ned says, wondering if anyone actually reincarnated into someone with a good life.

“Few years down the track, Ty turns 21. And guess who joins the family! It’s Hodr! God of all things cold and dark. Guess who becomes suicidal and fatalistic, like all of us haven’t been pushing that edge for years, and then Mike comes waltzing back in. Like he hasn’t been off seer knows where, getting into seer knows what.” Fili grumbles and throws himself back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “Things actually started getting better for a little bit. And then Axl went and turned 21 and became fucking _Odin!_ Like we didn’t have enough shit on our plate, no. Baby bro has to go and become the biggest fuck head in the pantheon. And the goddesses decide to rear their pretty heads again, along with my mother. Who basically spent a little bit of time trying to have Axl killed? I don’t know, I’m still confused about how all that actually worked out?”

“Your mother tried to have your brother killed?” Ned asks, eyes wide. Fili gives a grumpy little nod.

“Yehep. And then she got herself killed by Loki for killing Hel, Loki’s daughter, because Hel is the goddess of the dead and literally all things dead, and she was married to Ty because things happened. And their marriage was like, the least healthy thing I’ve ever seen since before my parents broke up, you know? _Great_ times.”

Ned stares at Fili in silent shock before encouraging the other to go on, secretly wishing he was downstairs with Vlad in the shop.

* * *

“So, have a nice day?” Vlad questions, falling into bed beside Ned. Ned grumbles at him and rolls over. “That bad, huh?”

“Have you met anyone from our past life who actually had a good life?” Ned questions, turning to burrow against Vlad.

“A few people, yes.” Vlad says quietly, thinking over the Reincarnated he’s met over the course of his life.

“Who?” Ned asks, intrigued. Vlad smiles and shakes his head.

“Surprisingly? Sauron.”

“What? But I-“

“He reincarnated into a ‘consulting detective’ in London. I actually think there’s a spark of Smaug in him, because Smaug reincarnated into the same man in the 1800’s. With reincarnated Sauron is reincarnated Bilbo. They actually share a flat together. It’s hilarious. Bilbo spends most of his time trying to teach Sauron to be human and how to care for people. When Smaug was this detective, the Master of Lake Town had reincarnated into his brother. They were actually people I didn’t mind knowing then, not evil, just… not as human as you’d want them to be.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I actually like them. It’s strange. Boromir reincarnates multiple times, and sometimes he has good lives, and sometimes he doesn’t. But he does die often. Kili is like me.”

“Like you?” Ned asks, cocking his head to the side.

“A vampire. He’s different from me, in ways neither of us have ever really been able to track down. It’s like we’re different species.”

“Well there are multiple different versions of vampires in mythology. It would make sense for there to actually be multiple different versions in reality.” Ned points out.

“That’s true.” Vlad pauses, a frown on his face. “Do you think Anders knows about Kili?”

“I doubt it. I doubt he’s had time to run into too many of us. But I’ll ask him tomorrow.”

* * *

Tomorrow starts with a hung over Anders slumped over the counter at the Pie Hole, moaning about his life choices. Ned sees him and sighs, rolling his eyes, he slides a slice of chocolate pie over to him and goes to start making the first pies of the day.

“Hey Anders, do you know what happened to your brother?” Ned asks, gently bringing some strawberries back to the prime of their life. Anders looks through the gap into the kitchen and stares at him strangely, before his hungover brain finally puts the pieces together.

“Oh, you mean Kili? Nah, had two other little brothers to worry about without worrying about the one I lost millennia ago. Why?” Anders replies, shrugging his shoulders.

“No reason. Vlad found him, though. They’re both vampires.” Ned answers, as if that explains everything.

“Well, I guess he deserved to live a long and happy life after all that we went through.”

“Agreed.”

“So anyway, what’s it like playing god?” Anders suddenly asks, a devilish grin on his face, and it is the start of a very lucrative friendship.


End file.
